11 19 16 morning call

Couple of surf sessions, a fat photoshoot at Honolua, a sunset windsurf session, and another gorgeous day (off) in Maui did not go wasted.

These are the shots I took at Honolua. Tatiana Weston-Webb is a goddess.


Chronological order from now on.

There were a bunch of pro surfer girls practicing for the upcoming contest. This is probably one of them, but I miserably failed to identify her.

Jacob Romero doing his crazy aerial flips on the heaviest sections.

The anticipation for the upcoming barrel.

Another unidentified girl on a sweet looking wall. The size at the Cave was often three times the size at the Point. Indication of a westerly set, in my opinion.

Heavy push on the brakes to set up the barrel...

...success! Came out clean.

Tatiana rips too. Love the wing span.

 

Front hand about to reach for the water to pivot even more in the bottom turn.

And bang!

Geez, I guess I don't watch enough of the girls and I don't know most of them.

Tatiana gets the shot.

Wonderful light on this wonderful wall for Romero.

Plenty barrels were ridden.

Jason Hall nose rides into one.

10 for the dive.

Jason with a sick back light.

 

Jimmie Hepp was on the lookout and I grabbed this shot from this gallery to show that it was inconsistent and with plenty people paddling for each single wave at the Cave. I didn't feel like joining the fight and caught some small ones at the Point.


4am significant buoy readings
NW
4.9ft @ 12s from 328° (NW)

N
7.7ft @ 13s from 326° (NW)

Hanalei
7ft @ 13s from 327° (NW)

Pauwela
7.1ft @ 8s from 29° (NNE)

6.1ft @ 13s from 335° (NNW)

Below is the graph of the Pauwela buoy. You can see that the peak happened in the late morning and not in the afternoon as I wrongly predicted.
The other thing that was not as expected was the direction. In yesterday's called I stated "killer direction for the Bay" and I was referring to both the 4am direction at the NW buoy (436) and at the Pauwela one (330). I was expecting the direction at the Pauwela buoy to become more northerly, like it already was at the NW buoy, but the opposite actually happened. While checking the readings during the day, the swell went as west as 322 and that explained the lack of consistency in the sets. Only the more northerly bigger sets would make it into the bay. Why that happened, sorry I haven't a clue.

This morning Pauwela is reading 6.1f 13s from 335 (on a slow down trend) and that should be a decent direction (shadow line of Molokai is exactly 335), but the period went down and the waves are going to be a bit less powerful and barreling. Also, the direction at the NW and N buoys are 328 and 326, so this swell continues to do have unclear direction trends. Nonethelss, it should still be a good day at the Bay, but it's way too crowded these days, so I think I won't drive over there anymore until after the contest is done. The strong windswell might get in there too and give the walls a wobble or two. N

That should be a more manageable size for Hookipa, so wind permitting, we should see the windsurfing action resuming, even though I'm not expecting nothing particularly clean, because of the wind and the windswell. Stay tuned for the beach report.

Current wind map shows:
- a new small NW fetch. Related moderate NW swell (3f 17s) on Tuesday
- the remnants of the NE fetch we saw yesterday. That is still the storm that created yesterday's (and today's) swell. now fully in the gulf of Alaska
- a strong windswell fetch
- a strong but compact fetch down under


NAM3km map at noon shows good trades for sailing on the north shore.


PS. I would appreciate if the mobile users would leave a comment saying if this post full of photos was heavy to load on your devices. Thanks.